Anime / Master of Martial Hearts

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Zettai Shougeki ~Platonic Heart~ (絶対衝激〜プラトニックハート〜), now licensed by FUNimation and retitled Master of Martial Hearts, is a five-episode OVA.

Aya Iseshima is a schoolgirl who ends up walking into a brutal battle between a Miko and a flight attendant. After saving the Miko with her kung fu skills that her mother taught her, Aya learns from both her friend and the Miko (coincidentally named Miko) the story of the "Platonic Heart", a mythical jewel that can supposedly grant any wish to a girl who acquires it. Miko further says that she found herself entered into a tournament to acquire the Platonic Heart with a cell phone text message from an unknown source.

After saying goodbye, Aya then receives a similar text message saying that she has been entered into the tournament in place of Miko, and so begins her reluctant quest to defeat a handful of cosplay-themed Action Girls including the aforementioned flight attendant, a nurse, a policewoman and more. With clothes-destroying physics and kung fu skills at her disposal, can she overcome her opponents or will she fall into an inescapable world of darkness?

Bait-and-Switch Credits: That opening is so charged with upbeat optimism, and the closing mellow and dreamy. You just know this tournament is going to end in a proud victory!

Berserk Button: Messing with Haruki or talking bad about him in Aya's presence will get you beaten like a rug in no time. Also, never try to dissect what makes Aya tick; it's not very conducive to living.

Bully Hunter: Aya once took on and defeated an entire school of bullies, single-handedly, and in a single battle, presumably for Natsume's well-being. Ironically, this is precisely what makes her easy prey for the "plot" of the series.

The Cake Is a Lie: Some of the contestants are revealed as having wishes that are physically impossible to fulfill in episode 5.

Calling Your Attacks: Suma-sensei calls out the formula of common chemicals; whether or not this is to add power to her attack, she also does it to purposely communicate them to Aya.

The Call Knows Where You Live: Apparently if there's an open spot in the tournament, any girl who has made a wish and can fight gets a text message inviting them. Subverted with Aya, as she was the true target all along.

Chekhov's Classroom: Suma's insistence that Aya study her assigned chemistry lesson. Subverted; though it would've provided clues for the battle, Aya failed to study, and her confusion at trying to recognize the called attacks distracts her from simply reading body language.

Complexity Addiction: The entire tournament done for revenge by Miko, Natsume and Haruki against Aya's mother, is so complex, long and, in many ways holding itself in inane future predictions; it probably works in fairy dust and Bellisario's Maxim to its atomic level.

Clothing Damage: All women's clothes in this world must be made out of tissue paper when they fight.

At one point a girl gets punched in the shoulder and her skirt explodes.

At another point, Aya actually punches a girl's in the gut. Her butt actually rips through her pants as a result.

This might actually be a function of the tournament — before Aya was a contestant, her clothes seemed a lot more durable.

Crippling Overspecialization: Episode 4's main fighter Rin made it to the Semi-finals because of her stress-based tactics. Apparently she had every fight inside of her shop, and was able to use an otaku crowd and their jeers to stress her opponents out so she could over-power them. When Aya over-comes this and turns the tables, we see Rin's physical prowess is much less than many previous villains like the Sisters.

Gainax Ending: Did anyone really see that ending coming? What's worse is that many elements are deliberately left hanging leaving the resolution entirely up to the imagination of the audience.

Gambit Pileup: Infodumped in the last episode: A trio of sisters who helped organize the tournament wanted Aya to join them, but they were being manipulated by a man who looked like Haruki, a boy Aya liked. Except that boy turned out to be a body double for the real Haruki who was working with Natsume and Miko who were secretly acting as Aya's friends. And they were trying to get revenge in the name of Natsume's mother, who lost her vocal cords when she lost the last tournament to Aya's mother, who in turn entered because Natsume's grandfather had started the whole damn thing.

Hypocrite: Miko blaiming Aya for destroying the other contestants' lives and minds after defeating them...when she and the others were the ones who literally Mind Raped them to idiocy after they were too weak to defend themselves. And also reconstructed, or simply exploited, said tournament for vengeance in the first place.

Indecisive Deconstruction: When you're going to go after the Panty Fighter genre, don't include more fanservice and nudity than the series you're trying to lambast. It makes you look like a gang of hypocrites.

Info Dump: The last episode is literally just explaining the plot twist.

Insane Troll Logic: The explanation of Miko, Haruki and Natsume for the Tournament is so mind-bogglingly stupid it would leave the viewer in the same capacity as the former contestants.

Killed Off for Real: Everyone that appears in Fight 5, except Aya. Heavily believed to be the case for Natsume's mother, given her role in the series.

Not Just a Tournament: A big time (and convoluted as hell) case of this. Every girl who loses the tournament is Mind Raped into an Empty Shell state before being conditioned into sexual slavery and sold. The entire thing is being conducted as a Cycle of Revenge by the daughters of two sisters who wound up on the losing end of a similar tournament organized by Aya's father, which Aya's mother won. The two cousins want the same thing their mothers got put through to happen to Aya as revenge against both of her parents, and they don't care about what happens to the other contestants.

Obfuscating Stupidity: Aya's mother for certain, as she remains just as lethal and unforgiving as stated, despite it being years since she had to fight.

Off Model: Seriously Studio Arms, pick a breast size and stick with it.

Revenge by Proxy: The whole point of the series, e.g. having the main character beaten, mindraped and possibly sold into sexual slavery as a final Screw You! to her still-living mother and her currently dead father, responsible for having dealt this very same fate to the still-living mother of one of the villains.

Selective Obliviousness: When the villains appear, they reveal that the whole Martial Hearts tournament was a plot to get revenge on the main character because her parents hurt their parents by holding the original Martial Hearts tournament. They recreated the same event that permanently scarred their parents, including the part where losers are sold into slavery, in a plot to get revenge on someone who had no knowledge of the original event.

Sempai/Kohai: Aya and Natsume, with some Girls Love implication, though the latter turns out to be a huge ruse.

Surveillance as the Plot Demands: While Aya's is explained by being done by Miko and the rest, it never makes sense how they recruit the rest of the girls, except for the Handwave explanation below. The requisites for entry are, after all, kind of limited for most of the population.

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